


when darkness speaks his name

by oh_fudgecakes



Category: Tokyo Babylon, X -エックス- | X/1999
Genre: (Hokuto's), Alternate Universe - Phantom of the Opera Fusion, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, M/M, Seishirou lives, basically the scene where the phantom murders someone on stage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-11
Updated: 2018-10-11
Packaged: 2019-07-29 14:45:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16266377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oh_fudgecakes/pseuds/oh_fudgecakes
Summary: Phantom of the Opera AU:When darkness speaks his name, he goes. Down into a dream, where there are only murky waters and lanterns strung from damp, greening walls. A long rowing stick tilts up and down in the hands of a tall man, his broad back turned on the bow of the long rowboat.An echoing cavern with a music stand — he sings.A hand drawn gentle over his brow — he sleeps.He wakes in his own bed, in his nightclothes, cold and completely alone.





	when darkness speaks his name

When darkness speaks his name, he goes. Down into a dream, where there are only murky waters and lanterns strung from damp, greening walls. A long rowing stick tilts up and down in the hands of a tall man, his broad back turned on the bow of the long rowboat.

An echoing cavern with a music stand — he sings.

A hand drawn gentle over his brow — he sleeps.

He wakes in his own bed, in his nightclothes, cold and completely alone.

Startled, he slips from the bed and leans over the windowsill, stopped from falling by the golden grills that cover every window in the opera house. The dewy morning breeze shifts the curls off his forehead, just like gentle fingers in the night. He closes his eyes, breathes in deep, and he sings.

  
  


“Have you heard the voice that sings in the morning? Have you heard?”

“The voice of an angel.”

“An angel of music.”

“Have you heard,” Yuzuriha whispers, giggling, and pirouettes playfully away from him, twirling a ribbon overheard, “The voice that sings in the morning? They hear your voice and say it's an angel’s.”

“It’s just a hobby of mine,” Subaru says shyly, “I’m not very good. Will you pass me my dance belt? I am only a ballet boy.”

He pulls his costume on and pinches the flames out on his desk, one by one, before dancing out onto the stage to join the others. As he makes his way through the narrow space behind the set, he bumps into the opera house’s new owners. They spin away from him at his light bump, chittering and chattering and making a great deal of noise with their pattering feet. _Empty vessels make the most noise_ , is what Hokuto would say if she were here, but she isn't, and Subaru would never say anything like that aloud.

“Good morning,” he says instead, with a respectful nod, and darts quickly out of the wings to join the rest of the dance troupe before they can reply.

“Late!” the director cries, “Sumeragi, as if your dreaming weren't already enough. What caused your tardiness this morning — more dreams?”

“I apologize.”

“And in this opera house,” the director turns to face their pouting lead, “We say Rome. Not _Roma!”_

“Rome! Roma! It is difficult! Roma rolls more smoothly off the tongue in a fit of passion!”

The next twenty minutes go by in an agony of minor corrections as the ballet boys and girls shuffle their feet in silence, unable to speak for fear of interrupting the director. Subaru closes his eyes, leans against a prop chaise, and begins again to dream. When he wakes in the mornings, he wakes with the barest whisper of his night’s dreaming still upon his tongue. Water in a labyrinth. A music stand. He wakes feeling strangely unrested.

“Attention!”

He wakes.

It's the new owners-cum-managers, shoving their way up onto the stage, in between the director and their male lead. They are pulling a younger man between them, drowned in a black cloak that is too big for him, and a black hat that covers half his face. When he looks up, his eyes are a strange violet. They catch Subaru’s gaze fiercely.

“This is the Vicomte Shirou. He is the new patron of the opera house! Come, Karen, sing him a song. Be a darling, will you not? Vicomte, this is our prima soprano, Karen Kasumi.”

Karen comes forward, looking distinctively unhappy. She has been nursing a sore throat for some weeks and so hates to be heard singing when her voice is not at its best. Subaru looks down again at his twiddling thumbs, and tries to pretend he is someplace else.

A thump.

And screams.

He startles out of his reverie. A sandbag has fallen and split open from the impact, center stage.

“He’s here!” someone screams.

“The phantom of the opera!”

“Where?” one of the managers cry, looking wildly about.

“The phantom of the opera,” Subaru breathes.

The other manager marches irately back onstage from where he had ducked briefly into the wings, palms raised.

“Please everyone, there is _no one there_ , so if there truly is a saboteur then he must be a _ghost!”_

More screams.

“You are frightening my girls!” Karen shouts at the managers hoarsely, “With your talk of ghosts!”

“They are frightening the boys too,” Sorata mutters rebelliously to Subaru under his breath.

The ballet mistress, Arashi, slaps him upside the head from behind.

“You _are_ frightening the boys with your talk of ghosts!” their male lead cries, and folds his arms, “Myself included! In fact, I am so frightened I have no mood to sing for this opera tonight. What shall I do if one of these bags falls upon my pretty head and breaks it open? How much will you pay me? Nothing, because I will be dead! Three years you've had to stop this from happening, and nothing. Well, now _I_ will not be happening until this is solved!”

“I feel as though that should have been my line,” Karen says, bemused, as their lead storms off the stage.

“But the show must go on, the show must go on!” one of the manager cries.

“Here,” Yuzuriha cries, and pushes Subaru forward, “Subaru can sing! He sings like an angel!”

And that, really, is the start of it all.

  
  


“And at the finale when Subaru cried _one last kiss before I lay you to rest!”_

“And his voice broke!”

“And he forgot the last line of the opera!”

“And then,” Karen laughs, “he bent his head and looked at me, but lost his nerve to kiss me on the lips.”

“And then they quickly brought the curtains down!”

“He kissed me on the cheek,” Karen tells them all, turning her face to the side and gesturing to her cheek, “then he looked up, and realized the curtain had come down!”

“But really,” Yuzuriha says kindly amid the good-natured crowing, perched on the edge of his dressing room table, “you were perfect.”

Subaru peers shyly out of the two bouquets of flowers he's hidden his face in.

“I was nervous,” he defends himself.

“Come,” Karen says, and swoops over to take the bouquets from him, “Let me find a pair of tall vases for these, and we can all go out to celebrate. Oh —”

Subaru looks up at the strange tone in her voice. She's peering down into one of the bouquets, an unreadable look on her face.

“This bouquet is from the Vicomte.”

Subaru blinks, and reaches for the bouquet. There is a note on it.

_I wish to speak with you. Your dressing room. After the performance._

It is signed _Kamui._

Karen turns the wrist that's holding the other bouquet, and a discreet note comes into view, tucked between the white callas.

_Your lesson at the same time and same place tonight._

It isn't signed.

Subaru reaches for the other bouquet with shaking hands, and clutches it to his chest, breathing hard.

“Please leave me,” he breathes, “I wish to be alone.”

  
  


A knock comes at his door.

“Come in,” he says quickly.

The door creaks hesitantly open, and then a familiar head pops in, familiar violent eyes fixed determinedly on him. Subaru sags a little in disappointment.

“Vicomte,” he greets, “I thought you were someone else.”

The Vicomte comes in, each step measured, slow, as if unsure of his own weight in the world and fearing he will turn something over and break it. He comes to Subaru’s dresser, where Subaru sits behind a candelabra of lit candles in his underclothing — his ballet leotard, his tights, and nothing else.

“You still,” the Vicomte chokes out, “look like her, you know?”

Subaru’s head snaps up at that.

The Vicomte is crying.

Suddenly, the familiarity of the name _Kamui_ makes sense. He stands up, his chair clattering to the floor behind him, and rushes around his dresser to pull Kamui into his arms.

“Kamui,” he whispers, “my dear Kamui.”

“Remember when you chased my red hat into the sea,” Kamui hiccups, “and nearly drowned?”

“You've grown so much,” Subaru murmurs.

Kamui pulls back, violet eyes still shining with tears, and now with adoration too. His arms are still around Subaru’s back, his cheeks wet and trembling with the force of his emotion.

“We should catch up over dinner,” he says, almost childlike in tone, then seems to notice Subaru’s state of undress for the first time, and stands up sheepishly, “I ought to let you get properly dressed. I'll wait outside.”

“Oh, Kamui,” Subaru breathes as Kamui scurries for the door, “I have a curfew. My tutor— he's very strict!”

Kamui turns and smiles at him, secretive and a little mischievous.

“That's what titles are for,” he says, “and I have one now. Tell him you left on the request of the Vicomte Shirou.”

With a little wink, he pulls the door shut between them.

Subaru sits alone at the dresser, accompanied only by the sounds of his frightened breathing. He looks slowly up into the dresser mirror at his own face, at _her_ face, at the face of the angel she promised to send, standing behind him.

“Insolent,” intones the angel, with a cold and terrifying wrath.

“I'm sorry,” Subaru pleads.

The angel tilts his head, then —

“Come,” he says, holding his hand out, and the mirror opens into a dream.

  
  


When he wakes from his dream, the first thing he sees is a man, bent over a desk at the end of an unfamiliar bed. There are red curtains draped over the walls, a candelabra lighting the parchment the man is writing on and the flash of his wrists, pale and catching the light as he writes. The angel pauses every once in awhile to dip his feather-tipped quill in an adjacent inkpot, but is otherwise wholly consumed in his writing. He does not notice when Subaru slips out of bed, slips up from behind him.

The angel wears a mask.

Subaru reaches out curiously from behind.

_The angel does not have a face underneath the mask._

Subaru screams.

The angel curses, and throws him to the ground, and shouts.

“Is this what you wanted to see?” he shouts, and snatches Subaru’s wrist up when he just sobs and tries to turn his face into the floor, “Look then! Look at me! Why do you look away?”

Subaru shuts his eyes tight.

But the image of the angel’s face remains imprinted behind his lids, horrific, so marred that his features did not even register as human, noseless with skin like a rotted corpse.

The angel lets go of his wrist and lets him drop to the ground. When Subaru next looks up, he is quietly affixing the mask back onto his face. It's a half-mask, one side peeling back to show unblemished skin. There is not enough untouched skin to judge whether the angel would have been handsome without his disfigurement, but his eye is a light but piercing hazel, the straight arch of his only brow a regal thing.

With the mask concealing his horrific disfigurement, Subaru can't help but stare, transfixed, at the elusive man who has haunted his dreams for months. There’s something about the way he holds himself, and Subaru can't look away.

Finally, the angel turns and looks calmly down at him, composed again. He raises his eyebrow.

“You aren't frightened,” he observes, and smiles, “Good.”

He holds his hand out again.

“Come,” he says, “sing for me, my angel of music.”

Subaru takes the man’s hand, gets to his feet, and taking a deep breath —

He sings.

  
  


“Subaru will be playing the page boy,” their returned male lead says the next day, sniffing disdainfully, “The silent role.”

Subaru looks down at his hands, and says nothing.

  
  


A letter comes to his room later that night, calling him to the apartment of the new owners. He goes. There he finds that letters had come to the ballet mistress Arashi, Karen, Kamui, and every other senior person at the opera house. They each nurse mugs over an untuned grand piano, looking at one another with shadowed eyes.

“My instructions are such,” Arashi reads from her note, “Sumeragi Subaru will play the lead. Our current lead, whose name I do not care to remember, will play the page boy — the silent role. I will remind you that Box Five should be kept empty for my viewing pleasure.”

A pause.

“If my demands are not met,” she continues, “a disaster beyond all imagination will occur.”

The new owners scoff, setting down their mugs with a loud _clunk._

“Ludicrous,” they sneer, “An opera ghost? Absolutely ludicrous. Here is what we are going to do —”

Subaru closes his eyes and breathes in deep.

  
  


He twirls once, offers his hand, twirls and takes a leap onto a garden ledge. At the front of the stage, their male lead sings to the crowd. Up in the boxes, one is filled by the Vicomte. Another, box five, is filled by the new owners. Subaru dances and spins and smiles in silence, saying nothing.

A shadow flashes across the backdrop.

The dancers titter, spooked, but continue.

There's a tree on their set, made from a large dead cherry blossom that had been harvested from the opera house’s grounds. It's the finest thing on set, glorious and draped in elaborate baubles and velvet. Subaru dances behind it, peers out one side, then twirls back and peers out the other side, spins out and around it.

Another shadow.

A short scream, stifled into a muffled cry. The audience members in the first row look up, having heard it, but the second row has not noticed anything amiss.

Then a voice whispers sinisterly through the auditorium.

_I see that my instructions have not been met._

“What was that!” Karen cries, mid-song.

“Nothing,” their lead snaps, and then in an undertone, “Continue, you little toad.”

_Perhaps it is you who is the toad._

“Shut up!” he snaps, voice trembling as he strides up to the front of the stage, “Where are you hiding? Shut up! Shut— _aoOOurr—”_

The dancers scream. So does the audience. The manager comes onto the stage, arms spread open, face pale. Subaru steps back to give him the stage. Their lead is kneeling at the corner of the stage, hands over his throat, looking horrified at the strange croak that had just issued from it.

“We will be stopping Act I momentarily,” the manager announces shakily, “In the meanwhile, please enjoy the ballet from Act II, Scene IV, after which we will be returning to Act I with Sumeragi Subaru playing the Count.”

With some pointed gesturing, the orchestra in the pit begins to play the ballet hesitantly. Subaru looks to the dancers behind him. They look back at him. The rest of the dancers who would have danced for the ballet file out of the wings with some prodding, so Subaru takes his position in the troupe uncertainly, still confused. They are in the wrong costumes. The backdrop is still set to the garden scene in Act I.

He begins to dance stiffly, and the dancers follow after he nudges their manager off the stage with a _rond de jambe._

The orchestra plays just as stiffly.

The audience quiets, but the faces in the crowd look frightened and unsure. The orchestra drowns out the remaining murmurs. When Subaru looks behind him, he meets Sorata’s eye. The boy looks grim. Something is wrong, they know, but they do not know what yet.

In the middle of the second verse, there's a shout from backstage. The crowd mutters, but the orchestra plays on. The troupe continues to dance.

A thud.

The backdrop for the garden scene begins to go up for some reason, revealing the bare bones of the set’s scaffolding. Some of the dancers stop and turn to gape. Something falls from the rafters suddenly, swings into the tree, and is impaled with a sickening _crack-squelch._

It is the body of one of the backstage crew.

Screams. The audience members stand and begin to run, dancers running off stage as well to get away from the body. The manager comes onto the stage again, trying to give an announcement that can't be heard over the sounds of screaming and shouting.

Subaru stands alone at the foot of the tree, looking up at the body pierced through the chest by a large branch, its eyes staring blankly back down at Subaru.

  
  


That night he wakes to the gentle rocking of a boat. A black jacket has been draped around his shoulders, and he has been laid — carefully, like a jewel upon a velvet bed — atop a soft black cloak, which has been folded up on the bow.

He looks up, and meets a piercing hazel gaze with opened eyes.

“Are you frightened yet?” the angel asks.

“No,” Subaru says, and is surprised to find that it is true.

The angel looks down at him with inscrutable eyes.

“You are mine,” he finally says.

The boat rocks slowly on. After a minute or so of silence, the angel begins to sing, quietly and gently, his voice rumbling comfortingly as he projects his echoing song to the greening walls. Subaru just closes his eyes and lays his head back down into his arms. He knows the sound of this singing voice, knows it with certain familiarity.

It is the voice that sings in his soul in the dead of night. It is the song in his dreams that calls him into flight. It is the dark magnetism of this man with the face of a demon, but the voice of an angel, that draws him in, draws him close, draws him forever into darkness.

Later, he lies in the bed and watches the angel as he leans over the desk, absorbed in his writing. Every once in awhile, he stops to sing a few phrases under his breathes, before continuing. This time, Subaru does not sleep. He just listens.

  
  


“Where did you go?” Kamui cries the next day, “The entire opera house was searching for you! The managers have called the police. I thought— I was asked to testify, and I did not know where you had gone. I thought the phantom had taken you.”

There are police patrolling every hallway of the opera house. Subaru leans against the golden grills over his windows to watch them prowl the gardens in the waning twilight. He hears the darkness whisper to him, and turns to look at himself, at her, at the angel she sent standing there, behind his shoulder.

“Angel of darkness,” he whispers, “Angel of death. Haven’t you come to take me to be with her?”

The angel just looks at him for a long moment, then turns away, and disappears.

  
  


There's someone with him every moment of the coming days. Most days, it's Kamui, wide-eyed and frightened. He's so young. He doesn't understand the chaos that surrounds him. Other days, it's Karen, or Yuzuriha, or even a police officer when no one is available. Sometimes it's even the new owners, who never have much to say about anything but the state of their investment and their money.

As their show draws nearer to closing night, they begin the discussions for the next show. They host a party, as they are wont to do — a masquerade.

“You look very nice,” Kamui tells him outside the ballroom doors, “but if I didn't already know who you were, I wouldn't know who you are for the life of me.”

“Isn't that the point of a masquerade, Kamui?” Subaru asks, and then fixes Kamui’s mask more securely for him, “I can't tell who you are either.”

They open the doors, and are almost immediately separated. Subaru allows himself to be swept along by the tide of the crowd, without saying a single word. At one point Kamui resurfaces out of the crowd, and he watches Kamui get swept up in a conversation with a woman who has very enthusiastically mistaken him for someone else. He looks like he's trying to point out the mistake to the woman, but the woman just keeps talking over him.

A change of song.

He's swept along again, losing sight of Kamui, losing track of any point of reference at all.

At the strike of midnight, a figure emerges from the mirrors of the grand foyer and raises one hand. Small explosions spill over the ballroom floor at his gesture. The crowd disperses, screaming.

Subaru recognizes the mask he wears.

It is Subaru’s angel, dressed as the Red Death in a characteristic moment of melodrama. There's a moment where the world tilts, where Subaru looks at his angel, and sees only a man — _only a man._ Not an angel of music, not an angel of darkness, not an angel of death. Only a man, when Kamui takes two steps up the foyer and grabs him by the collar, shouting in his face.

The angel does not flinch, but with a hard sweep of his arm, petite Kamui collapses onto the steps.

“This is the opera that you will play next season,” the angel says, quietly, but his voice rings around the silent ballroom with the surety and authority of divine commandment — “It is an opera of my own creation, for which Sumeragi Subaru will play the lead. My instructions should be clear.”

Karen comes up to the foyer when no one makes a move to take the score from him. The angel passes the thick book into her arms, then turns with a sweep of his red cloak over Kamui’s prone body, and ascends the stairs into darkness.

He turns, half shrouded in the shadows, and his eyes pierce Subaru’s immediately. Amid the crowd, masked and silent, but somehow his eyes find Subaru’s without fail.

“Your voice is still mine,” he says.

Kamui stands, and runs up the stairs.

“He's gone!” he shouts a moment later, and turns around to face the ballroom — _“He's gone!”_

  
  


When Subaru peers over the golden grills over his window now, there's never a time he does not see policemen patrolling the gardens. They all carry guns, loaded and held at the ready. The doors are secured and barricaded. No one can go in and out without a ticket.

_Shoot if you have to,_ he’d heard the whispers, _but shoot to kill._

Subaru wanders the grounds, attended at all times by someone else, fretful and anxious. Not an angel of music, not an angel of darkness, not an angel of death. Not the angel she had promised to send, that day in the attic, so long ago — he realizes that with a strange sense of loss, with a strange sense of despair.

The loss turns to rage.

Who then? _Who then?_ Who is this man?

When he's not wandering the opera house, he sits alone in his room, chair pulled in front of the mirror.

“Who are you?” he whispers harshly, “Who _are_ you?”

There is no answer.

  
  


On the anniversary of his birth, he leaves the opera house for the first time in months.

A long black sedan takes him where he wants to go. He steps out of the car, dressed all in white, and walks slowly down the long pebble path deep into the cemetery, flanked on both sides by stone angels. Above, a lonely moon watches over his contemplative footsteps. Finally, he stops at the foot of a large stone angel seated on a cement block, kneels, and lays his head in the angel’s lap.

“Where are you, sister?” he whispers, and a single tear trails across his nose bridge, “Why am I still alone?”

“You don't have to be.”

He looks up.

Subaru’s angel sits on the wing of the stone angel. He has a cane laid across one knee, his hazel eyes unreadable. For a moment, the anger rises again in him, the betrayal, the terrible, terrible sense of aloneness, of despair. But the angel’s promise lies heavy in the air between them, cutting through doubt, cutting through fear, cutting through the masks between. For a moment, nothing seems to matter. For a moment, Hokuto’s promise falls away, replaced by a new offer, a new promise.

The angel reaches one hand for Subaru, palm up, and Subaru reaches back.

_“Monster!”_ comes a scream.

It's Kamui, running toward them from the sedan. There are tears streaking his face. He looks terrified.

“Leave him be!” Kamui cries through his own terror, “Haven't you tormented Subaru enough? What is your obsession with him? Leave him be!”

Subaru looks up at the hand being offered to him, then back at Kamui.

“Kamui needs me,” he whispers.

When he turns back around, the angel is gone.

  
  


Leaning against the golden grills, he watches the policemen patrolling the grounds with their guns. The opening date of the angel’s opera fast approaches.

He spends most of those days watching from behind those grills, a canary in a gilded cage. He spends those days thinking, turning the angel’s promise over and over in his head, spends those days remembering that moment where the angel had reached for him, and everything had fallen away.

_You don't have to be._

Subaru closes his eyes.

“I don't have to be,” he whispers, alone in his room with no one to hear.

And the empty space in him begins to stitch together again.

  
  


Kamui brings him a bouquet of yellow daisies on opening night. It's a thoughtful gift. Subaru had loved daisies as a child. A second bouquet appears mysteriously on his dresser, white callas bathed in baby’s breath — a funerary flower arrangement. There is no note that comes with it.

He gets dressed, goes out onto the stage, and sings.

Box Five is occupied by policemen, but he knows the angel is listening, even though he doesn't know where the angel may be listening from. He sings anyway, and dances with a hooded Death. The character’s dark shroud obscures the actor’s face, but as they sing their deadly duet, Subaru becomes increasingly certain.

He throws Death’s hood back at the end of the song.

It is the angel, unmasked.

The crowd screams.

“It _is_ you,” Subaru breathes, “It _is_ —”

A gunshot.

The angel grabs his wrist, and they disappear into a set of curtains that opens into a trap door.

  
  


“Where are we going?” Subaru gasps as the angel yanks him down the old stairs into underground waters, “What are you doing?”

_“You betrayed me,”_ the angel hisses disbelievingly— _no_ , he is only a man— unmasked and angry.

“No,” Subaru says.

“Did you hope they would shoot me? When you unmasked me on that stage? Did you—”

“No!” Subaru cries.

When he pulls at the man’s hand around his wrist, to his surprise, the man falls to his knees. That's when he sees the red blooming steadily across his white shirtfront. He's been shot.

“We need to get to safety,” Subaru says, “If they find us, they will kill you.”

He drags the injured man across the dock and deposits him in the boat. The man is breathing hard, brow creased in pain, one hand clutching tightly at his shoulder to stem the flow of blood.

“What are you doing?” he asks, as Subaru picks up the rowing stick and pushes them away from the dock. His face is turned slightly away, the disfigured side angled carefully into shadow, and his good eye watching Subaru warily. Even now, injured and shivering in the chill of the underground, he's so _vain_. Subaru reaches down and pushes his hair back from his face. The man flinches away.

“Do you have a name I can call you?”

The man looks at him disbelievingly. “Are you mad?” he asks, incredulous.

“Perhaps,” Subaru says, and begins to push the boat down a familiar stretch. He knows the way.

After some moments of silent rowing, he bends to pick up the mask that had fallen into the boat behind him, and offers it to the man in the boat with him. It is received with no small amount of suspicion. Subaru shrugs and continues to row. He averts his eyes to give the man some privacy as he puts the mask back on, putting himself back together again.

“Seishirou,” the man finally mutters.

Subaru startles. _“What?”_

“That's my name.”

“Oh,” Subaru says.

There appears to be no further conversation forthcoming. Subaru shrugs again, and continues to row.

  
  


When they reach the isle, Subaru unties the white silk cloak from around his shoulders, and rips it into even thin strips. He lays them over the organ and begins to clean the wound. It’s just a bullet graze, a deep and painful one, but a graze nonetheless. After it’s cleaned, he wraps it up neatly.

“Aren't you afraid?” asks the angel. _Seishirou_ , that's his name.

Subaru sits on the bed opposite him, close enough that their knees touch.

“No,” he says.

Seishirou laughs.

“My mother loved me like she loved no other,” he shares suddenly, “but even she could never bear to look at me for long.”

Subaru scoots forward in his seat, pressing closer, and raises one hand carefully and slowly. Seishirou flinches back, eyes fixing on him. With a reverent exhale, Subaru cups the man’s cheek.

“This face holds no horror for me,” he whispers.

Seishirou frowns, confused, as Subaru smiles, and leans in.

A clatter.

They both start, pulling back from one another. Seishirou’s eyes flick up and behind Subaru, before his expression goes flat. He stands.

“It appears we have a guest,” he says.

Kamui stumbles out of the shadows, face tear-streaked and covered in dirt, trousers shredded, cloak discarded and hat long lost.

“Kamui!” Subaru cries, lunging immediately for the boy, but finds himself suddenly captive in strong arms. He gasps as one arm comes around his neck, hands flying up to grasp it in shock, “Sei—”

The arm tightens.

“Free him!” Kamui shouts, starting forward and tripping immediately over a chest. He sprawls over the stone floor with a cry of pain.

“Kamui—” Subaru chokes, “Leave this place. Go!”

“I’m not leaving without you!"

Seishirou laughs.

“How touching,” he comments, lazy and amused.

“What do you want with Subaru?!”

“Kamui, please—”

Kamui determinedly pushes himself up to his feet, expression fierce despite the tears on his cheeks.

“Let go!” he insists.

“Okay,” Seishirou says, and lets go.

Subaru falls to his knees, coughing. When he turns around, Seishirou is gone, vanished into the shadows somewhere, somehow. A small body crashes into him from the side, arms tightening around his waist. Concerned, Subaru turns his attention to looking over Kamui. The boy’s knees and elbows are horribly scraped, and he definitely seems shaken, but otherwise, he seems fine.

Kamui pulls back from him. There are fresh tears on his cheeks now.

“I was so worried,” he cries, “I thought he had killed you.”

“He wouldn't,” Subaru says.

“We need to get out of here.”

_“Not so fast.”_

The voice echoes eerily around the cavern, the direction of the source undeterminable. Kamui stiffens in his arms.

“Show yourself!”

“Kamui,” Subaru begins warningly, and then looks up, “Please, Seishirou. No more games.”

A flash of black from the corner of his eye, and then Kamui is torn from his arms, shouting in alarm. Subaru whips around. A lasso tightens around Kamui’s neck, the end extending up and into darkness.

Seishirou appears from the shadows. There's something predatory about the baring of his teeth, and the cat-like gleam of his tawny eyes.

“Make a choice,” he commands, “Him or me. Stay here with me forever in darkness, or I will send him to his grave. Become mine completely and forfeit all others, or I will end his life here. It's your choice.”

“Subaru, no!” Kamui cries.

“I’ll stay. I'm already yours,” Subaru bargains desperately, taking a step forward, “But this doesn't have to be all or nothing. You don't have to keep me from the world.”

“And what if I let you return to the world?” Seishirou snarls.

“I’ll come back to you.”

“You don't have to promise him anything!” Kamui yells, and struggles against the lasso. It just makes the rope tighten.

“Do you think me a fool? You’ll run the moment I let you go,” Seishirou accuses.

“I’ll come back to you!” Subaru pleads, taking another step forward, “Believe me!”

“Why make him lie to save me?” Kamui shrieks.

Eyes fixed on Subaru, Seishirou begins to pull slowly on the rope in his hand. Kamui’s hands fly up to the lasso around his neck as he begins to choke.

“Release him!” Subaru cries, “Seishirou, please!”

Seishirou continues to pull.

“You try my patience with your bargaining,” he says quietly, dangerously.

“Seishirou—”

“Make your choice,” he commands, and lets go of the rope.

Kamui takes in a deep, desperate breath, and immediately begins to cough. Seishirou’s eyes gleam cat-like from the shadow.

Subaru takes a step forward.

“Show some compassion,” he whispers, “Don’t cage me in this darkness. Isn't it enough that I’m yours? Isn't it enough that I’ll return? If you really want me, then show me some compassion.”

Seishirou snatches his wrist up, grip painfully tight. Subaru cries out in pain.

“Show some compassion?” Seishirou asks, disbelievingly, and laughs, “The world showed no compassion to me. Cruelties like this happen everyday. The world moves on.”

There is no sorrow in Seishirou, no bitterness or anger at his words. It's stated as mere fact, but there's something hurting inside Subaru at that flippant admission. His heart clenches down painfully. Suddenly, he can feel hot tears rolling down his cheeks.

“You’re crying.”

Subaru wipes the tears away with the back of one hand. Seishirou laughs.

“Do you think crying will soften me?” he asks.

Subaru shakes his head, and finally gives in to what he’s wanted to do all along, flinging himself forward and throwing his arms around Seishirou’s neck. After a shocked moment, Seishirou shoves him away. Subaru lunges forward and kisses him again, but Seishirou pries him determinedly off.

“What,” he says flatly, “are you doing?”

“I love you,” Subaru chokes out.

Seishirou blinks, and then frowns. He leans in a little closer, as if he had heard wrongly.

“What?” he asks, incredulous.

Subaru closes his eyes.

“I love you,” he manages again, and steps into Seishirou’s arms again.

The man steps back, pushing Subaru away.

“I’ll stay,” Subaru sobs, scrubbing away fresh tears, “Just say you need me with you. Say the word and I will follow you, into darkness or into light, anywhere you go. Say you love me — that’s all I ask, just say you love me.”

But Seishirou doesn't say anything.

Seishirou just watches him, a considering look on his face. Subaru steps into Seishirou’s arms again, but while the man doesn't step away, he doesn't embrace Subaru either. Subaru holds him for a few moments before letting go, confused. He looks up into Seishirou’s face again. Seishirou’s expression remains closed.

“I don't understand,” Subaru whispers, “Your promise — Don't you... Don’t you _love me?”_

Seishirou looks him in the eye.

“No,” he says flatly.

Subaru takes a step back at the bluntness of it. He stares into Seishirou’s eyes, but he can see no lie in them. Something is breaking inside him, like glaciers creaking, cracking, and slowly parting. All that’s left are dark, empty waters.

Numbly, he turns away. Seishirou does not stop him from approaching Kamui, does not even stop him from cutting the boy down, and untying the lasso from his neck.

“Subaru,” Kamui gasps.

“Let’s go,” Subaru says.

There are a flight of stairs ascending up and into shadow, the route that Kamui had taken down to find him. Kamui’s cloak lays abandoned at the base of the stairs. He bends to pick it up, and turns to look back upon the wretched figure behind him. Seishirou is sitting at the organ, back straight, turned away.

“If you ask me to stay,” Subaru says hoarsely, “I will.”

Seishirou says nothing.

“Ask me to stay,” Subaru tries again, more forcefully.

Seishirou does not even turn around.

Nodding numbly, Subaru turns away, and continues to climb slowly up the stairs. Kamui follows after a moment. He does not look back.

  
  


When he returns, there are flowers. His dressing room is filled with bouquets for weeks, well wishes from every person in the aftermath of his apparent kidnapping. Even the police officers from the night have sent him flowers.

There are no lilies.

His heart threatens to shatter again at the thought, but somehow, he manages to keep it together.

Karen fusses over him for days, checking his temperature every ten minutes and generally working herself into a frenzy. Yuzuriha comes in on the third day and manages to drag her out. She had probably spoken to Karen about it, because Karen had come back slightly calmer.

The police patrol the grounds for another week, before disappearing without warning one day. Kamui comes in that day, holding his hat in front of him sheepishly.

“I might have,” he confesses, “acquired the opera house.”

The next week, they begin rehearsals for the next opera. They have new managers, much to Subaru’s relief, and Kamui comes down to watch the rehearsals every Friday. Afterwards, they go out for dinner.

On every day other than Friday, he keeps strictly to his curfew. He returns to his dressing room, sits at his dresser, and waits dutifully for his lesson. Seishirou does not come. He waits anyway. Sometimes he cries, sitting alone at his dresser with no one to see.  
  
  


The months pass. They have another masquerade to celebrate the opening of the new opera. Subaru is swept up again in the revolving tide, but no Red Death steps out to make demands. He drinks a little too much, and ends up crying in the garden.

He wakes up in his own bed the next morning, a chiding note from Kamui about drinking too much on his bedside.

On the opening night, Subaru looks up to the boxes when he steps onto the stage. He’s disappointed to see that there's a suited man seated in Box Five, torso obscured by the velvet curtains.

He cries, right there on the stage. Closing his eyes, he clutches at his heart— and he sings. Mournfully, he sings.

When he ends the song, the audience is in tears.

He retreats backstage amidst the standing ovation, and cries a little more before his next song.

“Who sat in Box Five?” Subaru asks Kamui afterwards, out of some strange masochism.

Kamui looks at him funny.

“No one,” he says, “I purposely told the managers that Box Five was to be kept empty.”

  
  


Box Five is empty for the rest of the season, until closing night. That night, Subaru finds a single white lily on his dressing room table.

There is no note.  
  
  


Kamui becomes engaged to a nice girl from a nice family. The girl has beautiful honey curls and large brown eyes. Her name is Monou Kotori. She clearly adores Kamui, and Kamui clearly adores her. They are to be wed in the spring.

Subaru thinks it's sweet, but he knows that there's something strange about it all. There’s something strange about the way that Kamui looks at Kotori’s brother. There’s something to be said about it there, but Subaru definitely has no right to judge.

He begins to see shadows moving out of the corner of his eye, sometimes, when he's alone in the opera house, and knows that _he_ is there.

At the next masquerade, he drinks too much again, and ends up dancing with a stranger for the entire night. The man helps him to his room after the party ends, somehow knowing the way, and gently undresses him for bed, tucking him carefully under the sheets. Under the red mask, the man chuckles to himself.

“Really, Subaru,” the man murmurs, “you shouldn't drink so much at parties.”

  
  


As the years pass, old friends begin to leave the opera house, Karen among them.

“I'm getting old,” she sighs, “It's time to retire.”

Subaru is only five years younger.

That night, as the bed creaks behind him in darkness, he opens his eyes.

“Maybe I should think about retiring,” he announces, “sometime in the next five years.”

A kiss on his nape. A warm body curls around him comfortingly. Satisfied, he closes his eyes, and goes to sleep.

  
  


On the last night of his operatic career, he enters his dressing room one final time.

The room is covered entirely with flowers, from daisies to roses to orchids to sunflowers. There had been much crying backstage and at the afterparty. Poor Yuzuriha had been attached to his side all night, sobbing, and he’d even thought he’d seen Arashi shed a tear or two.

He stands in front of the mirror.

“Ask me to stay,” he whispers.

A familiar masked face appears over his shoulder, and Subaru smiles tenderly.

“Stay,” asks his angel.

And the mirror opens into forever.

**Author's Note:**

> I've actually been waiting on posting this one for like a good half year, but finally have decided that I don't really know how to make it better. This fic definitely has a different writing style than my usual one, but I enjoyed writing it. I must also admit that I'd been dying to write a POTO AU since watching POTO for the first time last year. Please do tell me what you think!


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